


Don and Charlie's Day Off

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Series: Brothelers [12]
Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prostitute, Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-07
Updated: 2010-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-05 22:46:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"So, Charlie, what do you want to do today?"</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Don and Charlie's Day Off

**Author's Note:**

> This story was first posted September 4, 2006.

Don woke up when Charlie came back into the room, carrying a tray he'd obviously swiped from the commissary. "Damn, you're awake," he said, grinning transparently as he walked over to the bed, setting the tray down on top of the covers. "Now I'm gonna have to share."

"Sorry, buddy," Don said, propping himself up on an elbow and snagging the nearer of the two mugs. "Life's rough all over."

"Mm," Charlie agreed, through a mouthful of donut. He was wearing the Princeton t-shirt he'd given Don for Hanukkah, after his first semester there. Don had given him a UCLA shirt the same year, but Charlie had grown between August and December, and it had been nearly too small even at the time. The Princeton shirt was badly faded, more gray than black, the orange letters cracked and barely legible, but Don would never get rid of it, and Charlie seemed to take a perverse delight in wearing it. He had frosting on his lips from the donut, and Don sat up--careful not to jostle the tray--and licked it away. It tasted good, but the way Charlie leaned into Don's touch tasted better. They were okay, this morning, for however long it might last. And today was their day off.

Don picked up his own donut and said, "So, Charlie, what do you want to do today?"

Charlie shrugged and smiled. "Oh, the usual."

* * *

Charlie stole a guilty glance toward the comfortable seating, on his way from the periodicals shelves to the photocopier, but Don was sprawled in an armchair, reading the latest _Scientific American_ with a small frown of concentration. Charlie glanced at the nearest table, and saw that Don had already stacked up a few other layperson-friendly magazines and a newspaper, and hurried off to the copiers. A lot of the quarterly journals had come in since his last visit, and everything sounded interesting.

Once he'd spent enough copying articles to seriously consider the wisdom of making off with a few of the journals (UCLA could afford to just order another one, after all, once they noticed theirs missing--but no, he didn't really need it, and he _did_ have the money for copies) Charlie carefully zipped his messenger bag shut and headed back to where Don was sitting.

He'd moved on from the magazines to the newspaper: to the crossword, in fact. Charlie leaned over his shoulder and watched, fascinated. He couldn't do crossword puzzles, himself. All his attempts turned into terrible jumbles of misspellings, question marks, paper erased and re-erased until it tore. Don would sit and study a grid for a while and then fill in one word after another, rapid-fire, and it was a little bit like magic. Halfway through, Don tilted his head back, looking up at Charlie upside down, and said, "You ready to go?"

Charlie shrugged--he could stand there and watch Don work the crossword forever, or at least for the further five or ten minutes it would probably take him to finish--but Don smiled and stood up, holding the newspaper. "You leave any room in your bag?"

* * *

Don nearly stopped walking completely when he glanced over and saw Charlie, holding his hot dog in one hand and licking mustard off the opposite wrist. As it was he nearly tripped over his own feet; when he'd recovered and looked over at Charlie again, Charlie was smiling, his mouth in a teasing little curl, somewhere in the improbable overlap between professional and obnoxious baby brother. Don smacked him lightly on the back of his head, and Charlie retaliated by taking an obscenely big bite of his hot dog.

"You should be careful," Don said, looking anywhere but at Charlie's glistening lips and distended cheeks. "You could choke."

"It's okay," Charlie replied, and he'd have been unintelligible to anyone but Don. "I know what I'm doing."

"Yeah," Don replied, shifting to walk behind him and slinging an arm around his throat. "So do I."

* * *

"Stop it," Charlie mumbled, and shifted his right arm just enough to nudge Don with his elbow. "I can feel you being on duty. Don't."

Don snorted, but Charlie heard the little clothes-and-grass sounds of him lying down again. They were in a park not far from the university campus, sparsely populated on a school day. Charlie was facedown in the grass. There were gardens at work, but none of them had anything as plebeian as _sod_ taking up precious square footage. Charlie liked the smell of grass, and the feel of the sun beating down on him (or on his shirt, anyway; if he came back with bad tan lines there would be hell to pay). But mostly he just liked lying on the ground with Don, right out in public where anyone could see them.

It made Don a little twitchy, though. The next time he felt Don move, Charlie lifted his head. Don was propped on one elbow, looking around; he'd have seemed relaxed, idly people-watching, to anyone who'd never seen him at work. "Is there anybody in sight who knows us?" Charlie asked, pitching his voice low. He didn't see anyone himself; there was a mom watching kids play, twenty yards away, a few people strolling by, two women sunbathing off to Charlie's left. None of them were looking in Don and Charlie's direction.

Don shook his head, and Charlie didn't doubt that he was perfectly certain of his answer. "Hey," Charlie said, and Don looked down. He leaned down when Charlie tugged at his sleeve, and kissed him softly and smiling in the sunshine.

Charlie closed his eyes and settled back on the grass, and didn't tell Don to relax again.

* * *

Don didn't ask, didn't even remark that they had time to stop. He just took the familiar freeway exit, winding through the familiar neighborhood. Every stop sign and every turn was as deeply embedded as gas on the right and brake on the left. He parked a block away and looked over at Charlie; this was his thing. Don had always just been along for the ride. Charlie nodded and got out, and Don followed him, down the street they had ridden their bikes up and down as kids. They walked past the houses where their friends had lived, where the neighborhood bully had lived, the cat lady, the old man who'd laugh and ruffle your hair when you hit a ball into his yard, and then Charlie cut down a driveway to the street, and they sat down on the curb across the street from the house where they'd grown up.

Mostly grown up, anyway, Don thought, glancing over at Charlie as he stared at the house with the same faraway thoughtful look he always had. Charlie had only been thirteen when he left to go to Princeton, and he'd never moved back in. By the time he came back from New Jersey for more than a holiday visit, Dad had moved to an apartment miles from here. Don had been eighteen that fall, and had moved out himself, into a dorm at UCLA. He hadn't wanted to stay after his mother and brother left; he'd known enough to get while the getting was good, even if he hadn't put it into those words for years afterward. He tried not to think about whether things might have been different if he'd stayed, if he hadn't dealt with his family by staying as far away from it as he could.

He was as close to Charlie as he could be now, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the curb. Charlie looped his arms around his legs and propped his chin on his knee, staring at the house like the roofline, the porch, the windows and the trees were all variables in some problem he was calculating. Don didn't know what exactly Charlie thought he would find here, one visit after another, but he couldn't really blame him for trying.


End file.
